The table top lighting market for restaurant, hotel, catering, and other businesses has been normally accomplished by placing a portable renewable light source on the table. The portable renewable light sources generally fall into two broad categories: (1) Fossil fuel based, e.g. candles, paraffin cartridges, etc. (2) Electric battery based, e.g. the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,853. The electric based system consist of a central battery recharging unit serving a plurality of battery power packs used in cafe table top lighting fixtures.
The system described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,853 has power packs which mate to the charger via phono jack/plug arrangement. In a typical restaurant requiring four or five dozen lamps, they are operated continuously for an eight hour shift and later all are recharged by plugging each into one of many phono plugs secured to the surface of a special charger.
The environment and/or the handling of the electric system is often very harsh. The rapid turnover of personnel using the system on a daily basis are often untrained in its use or for other reasons neglect the proper care and maintenance of all equipment. Like any other apparatus an electric table top lighting system can suffer damage from poor handling endemic to the restaurant trade.